China Online Beauty Sales Held at CN¥ 434.8 Billion in 2025

China's online beauty market held its size in 2025, with sales across three of the country's largest online marketplaces reaching CN¥ 434.8 billion, +3.4% on a 2024 trough, according to Moojing Market Intelligence. Growth has continued into 2026, although at +1.1% for January to July it is running at about a third of the previous year's pace.

These figures come from the first chapter of the full report, which follows China's beauty spending across channels, price bands, the promotional calendar and the products that grew in the first half of 2026.

Method and scope: observed online sales of skincare, colour cosmetics, fragrance and beauty tools across three of China's largest online marketplaces, modelled by Moojing Market Intelligence from listings and captured prices, 2022 to July 2026. This is not the total market, since offline retail and several other marketplaces sit outside it.

How big is China's online beauty market?#

China's online beauty sales across three of the country's largest marketplaces reached CN¥ 434.8 billion in 2025, according to Moojing Market Intelligence, which is 2.2% below the CN¥ 444.6 billion of 2022. The category bottomed out at CN¥ 420.7 billion in 2024 before recovering by 3.4% the following year.

The small decline over three years is almost entirely down to one segment, since skincare fell 8.8% between 2022 and 2025 while colour cosmetics, fragrance and beauty tools grew 18.8% over the same period.

Exhibit 1. Source: Moojing Market Intelligence, observed marketplace data across three online marketplaces, whole beauty category by year, CN¥ billion. Not the total market.

Why the mix has shifted is hard to prove from sales data alone, but we believe Chinese consumers have become more deliberate about how they buy, researching for longer, waiting for the promotional windows and comparing more before they commit. We also believe that brands are leaning towards local sourcing and local product development, which they can control, rather than towards imported lines that are exposed to cross-border and tariff conditions, which they cannot.

How did skincare, colour cosmetics and fragrance perform in 2025?#

All three core beauty segments grew in 2025, bringing their combined online sales across three of China's largest marketplaces to CN¥ 416.4 billion (US$ 57.9 billion), +3.5% on 2024, according to Moojing Market Intelligence. Fragrance grew fastest, by 18.3%, and skincare, by far the largest segment, grew 2.0%.

Fragrance rebounded in 2025 from a dip the year before, although it remains less than a twentieth the size of skincare, while colour cosmetics grew 6.8%. The combined total covers skincare, colour cosmetics and fragrance only, so it is lower than the whole-category figure above, which also includes beauty tools.

Exhibit 2. Source: Moojing Market Intelligence, observed marketplace data across three online marketplaces. US$ at the 2025 annual average of 7.1874 CN¥/US$ (European Central Bank reference rate).

Is China's beauty market still growing in 2026?#

China's online beauty category grew 1.1% in the first seven months of 2026 against the same months of 2025, according to Moojing Market Intelligence, down from 3.6% when 2025 is measured the same way against 2024. Growth has not stopped, although across the three marketplaces it has thinned to about a third of the 2025 rate.

The year opened strongly, although January's +15.5% owes much to the timing of Lunar New Year, since January and February taken together grew 3.5%. Three of the six months after January were negative, which is why we read the seven-month total rather than any single month as the fairer measure of where the category stands.

What does the trend suggest for the rest of 2026?#

The trend points to growth of between 2.1% and 10.6% in 2026 for colour cosmetics, fragrance and beauty tools, according to Moojing Market Intelligence, which makes this the part of China's beauty market we are most optimistic about. For the whole category, the trend is too weak to support a reliable full-year projection.

To reach that range we fitted a log-linear trend to trailing twelve-month sales (each month summed with the eleven before it) across 45 windows ending July 2026 and projected it five months ahead with a 95% prediction interval. For colour cosmetics, fragrance and tools the fit has an R² of 0.93, a close fit, against only 0.21 for the whole category, which is why we rely on the year-to-date figure above for the total.

Have beauty tools and men's skincare taken up the growth?#

Beauty tools and men's facial care have not taken up the growth, since across the three marketplaces both were flat, with beauty tools going from CN¥ 12.8 billion in 2024 to CN¥ 12.6 billion in 2025 and men's facial care from CN¥ 6.2 billion to CN¥ 6.1 billion, according to Moojing Market Intelligence.

Most of the growth that the category does have in 2026 comes from colour cosmetics and fragrance, and inside skincare it has gone to products that promise a specific result, which the later chapters of the report follow product by product.

How does this compare with last year's edition?#

Last year's edition of the report, and our article on it, put 2025 online beauty and skincare sales at CN¥ 454.2 billion, up 9.7%. That edition was measured on a different basis from this one, so its totals and growth rates should not be set against the figures here, although the direction of travel can be compared.

For the rest of the picture, including how the channel mix, the shopping calendar and the price ladder have moved since 2022, the six chapters of the full report take each question in turn. Our China beauty market intelligence page sets out what else we cover in the category.